


This Kiss

by suitesamba



Series: The "This" Series [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Drunkenness, First Kiss, Humour, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-17
Updated: 2014-05-17
Packaged: 2018-01-25 11:11:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1646513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suitesamba/pseuds/suitesamba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stag Night - back at 221B - in a world where Mrs. Hudson doesn't interrupt the guessing game with the client.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Kiss

“Am I the current king of England?”

John’s voice wobbles as he laughs. He wipes mirthful tears from his eyes and peers at Sherlock through a haze of whiskey. In his foggy mind, he wonders if Sherlock knows they don’t have a king at all.

“King Sherlock,” he says with a drunken, lopsided smile. “His Royal Highness. His Majesty.” He is slurring the words, to interesting effect, but it amuses Sherlock.

“Not me. _Him._ ” Sherlock raises both eyes as if pointing to the paper adhered to his forehead, then swallows more whiskey. “So I am human, I’m not as tall as people think I am. I’m nice-ish, clever, important to some people, but I tend to rub them up the wrong way.”

John stretches, pressing his socked feet against Sherlock’s chair, melting back into his own. His eyes are soft, his face relaxed, his mouth lifts into a sloppy grin. He is living in the moment, his mind and body fixated on the here and the now, on Sherlock Holmes, his best friend, his intellect endearingly compromised by alcohol.

“Got it.” Sherlock leans forward, smiling like a little boy, delighted with his victory.

John raises an eyebrow. 

“I’m _you_ , aren’t I?”

John sputters. His shoulders begin to shake. He lets out a snort, and erupts into giggles. He looks up as Sherlock clumsily pulls the paper from his forehead, stares at it, then looks up at John. 

“Nice-ish?” he intones. He raises one eyebrow, then falls back into his chair, curling in on himself and giggling.

_Giggling._

John’s sock-clad toes press into Sherlock’s thigh. Sherlock reaches down without thought and squeezes John’s ankle.

John laughs, presses his toes in again. “Tickles,” he manages.

“ _Sometimes_ human?” Sherlock’s brain is struggling to engage. He tries to look affronted. Fails. Smiles at John again.

He squeezes the arch of John’s foot. His fingers linger and John closes his eyes, involuntarily, and sighs.

It is an invitation. Sherlock sober might have missed it. Intoxicated Sherlock does not. His hand stills on John’s foot and he stares across the rapidly closing abyss between them.

John opens his eyes, catches Sherlock’s. There is no one else in the room, in his mind, in his heart, as he deliberately presses his toes, once again, into Sherlock’s thigh.

Sherlock’s fingers slip numbly from his ankle as John lowers his leg to the floor. It is so easy to slide from his chair, onto his knees before Sherlock. Sherlock, who is staring at him intently, whose legs are widely splayed, whose knees close in on his sides as he leans forward. 

This. _This._

His hands cup Sherlock’s face. They are nearly nose to nose. Sherlock’s smells of whiskey and sweat and smoke. His lips part, breath hitches, and as John waits, something seems to shift inside him. Something frozen, something hidden. The rules of engagement change as resolve melts away.

The kiss, when it comes, is initiated by both and by neither. They meet somewhere in the middle, and Sherlock proves that he can do so much more with his mouth than insult, direct, complain. The lips that meet John’s are not petal soft, not moist and gentle. They work his mouth and touch his heart like nothing ever has. They taste and devour and deduce and he knows Sherlock would have stolen his soul with that kiss if he didn’t already own it.

John has kissed countless women, but never before a man, and it doesn’t seem to matter. Lips are lips, and mouths are mouths, and when it is long over, he won’t classify kisses as having come from men or women, but from everyone else – and Sherlock. 

He stays there, in the vee of Sherlock’s legs, face pressed against Sherlock’s neck, and he doesn’t know what to do. In the matter of a moment, everything has changed. The incongruity overwhelms him, and he rests there, status quo tipped ten degrees, and waits for the world to collapse around him.

It doesn’t. And Sherlock, without comment or direction or demand, lays his head sleepily on John’s shoulder, and his soft curls brush against John’s cheek.

If this is all, this single moment of peaceful clarity before the world changes, it will never be enough.

It was Sherlock first. Sherlock foremost. Sherlock when the world was torn asunder. 

And that is his answer.

And this, _this_ , is his home.


End file.
